lve regiments of
foot and two regiments of horse. An army of drapers' apprentices and
journeymen tailors, with common councilmen for captains and aldermen for
colonels, might not indeed have been able to stand its ground against
regular troops; but there were then very few regular troops in the
kingdom. A town, therefore, which could send forth, at an hour's notice,
thousands of men, abounding in natural courage, provided with tolerable
weapons, and not altogether untinctured with martial discipline, could
not but be a valuable ally and a formidable enemy. It was not forgotten
that Hampden and Pym had been protected from lawless tyranny by the
London trainbands; that, in the great crisis of the civil war, the
London trainbands had marched to raise the siege of Gloucester; or that,
in the movement against the military tyrants which followed the downfall
of Richard Cromwell, the London trainbands had borne a signal part. In
truth, it is no exaggeration to say that, but for the hostility of the
City, Charles the First would never have been vanquished, and that,
without the help of the City, Charles the Second could scarcely have
been restored.

These considerations may serve to explain why, in spite of that
attraction which had, during a long course of years, gradually drawn the
aristocracy westward, a few men of high rank had continued, till a
very recent period, to dwell in the vicinity of the Exchange and of
the Guildhall. Shaftesbury and Buckingham, while engaged in bitter and
unscrupulous opposition to the government, had thought that they could
nowhere carry on their intrigues so conveniently or so securely as under
the protection of the City magistrates and the City militia. Shaftesbury
had therefore lived in Aldersgate Street, at a house which may still
be easily known by pilasters and wreaths, the graceful work of Inigo.
Buckingham had ordered his mansion near Charing Cross, once the abode
of the Archbishops of York, to be pulled down; and, while streets and
alleys which are still named after him were rising on that site, chose
to reside in Dowgate. [112]

These, however, were rare exceptions. Almost all the noble families of
England had long migrated beyond the walls. The district where most of
their town houses stood lies between the city and the regions which
are now considered as fashionable. A few great men still retained their
hereditary hotels in the Strand. The stately dwellings on the south and
west of